Topics - Hibou

Allow me to introduce you to the planet Murray. Originally, this frontier planet was an ice ball floating near the outer edge of its star's habitable zone. That is, until terraforming pioneers settled here and started pumping gases into the atmosphere to warm the place up. This did achieve the goal of melting the ice, but the process released more gases from underneath the sheets, causing a runaway reaction that turned this place from a sunny ocean getaway into a dark, dangerous planet constantly battered by a worldwide maelstrom.

Humans, as stubborn as they are, remained here for some time, unchecked by galactic governments. Drilling and fishing settlements came and went on its surface, and rumors circulated of more mysterious things happening beneath the waves. Nobody was quite sure what was going on, but more stories kept popping up about how one fisherman saw lights deep in the water, or a weather satellite picking up strange energy waves from the middle of the sea. People speculated, myths propagated, people claimed they found record proving it was a sunken space ship, or a vault full of gold, or the answer to life itself. Nothing concrete, of course, but it was enough to inspire people to go searching for these unclaimed treasures.

Riggers.

People looking for those treasures were called Riggers, because the unforgiving sea required special equipment to explore, and their impatient hands jerry rigged submersibles to descend into the waves. Very few came back, and none with treasure. Only more stories. That's how it was. Riggers had big dreams and empty hands, that is until you and your team of Riggers somehow came across a mysterious datachit during one of your outings. It was just lying there in an old box you found in a rusty shed out by the coast. It didn't seem very promising at first, but upon plugging it into your own console, you found that it carried a ton of encrypted data and a set of coordinates leading to some spot in the middle of the ocean. You're not sure what it could mean, but you've spent enough time on this planet to know people would kill for this kind of opportunity.

It looks like you guys had your first clue.

Another rainy day.

The team had gathered in their usual place, a previously abandoned basement office space. It was below a single story building, which also happened to be an old office owned by a financial firm or something similar back when people needed that kind of thing. It had been abandoned for some time before yours and a few other teams of Riggers decided to move in and use it to store supplies and possible leads. It had been fixed up pretty well, all things considered. The walls hadn't caved in and the water damage was moderate at worst. There was even a receptionist in the lobby, a nice woman named Maria. (She didn't do a lot as a receptionist, though. Not many people came seeking out Riggers. She was always waiting with a smile, even on the stormiest days, however. And she made a mean pot of coffee.)

Some might call your team's space a situation room, others might see a command center, and some: a complete mess. In truth it was somewhere in between. It had several tables set up in the central area that once was filled with cubicles, each one covered in something. Papers, gun cleaning tools, half-built contraptions or computers. The type and amount of clutter varied depending on who's table it was. The floor was similarly also messy, multiple wires snaked along the aging linoleum, leading to various lights and machines in the center of the office.

The northern part of the room had several doors set into it, each leading off to private offices that had been converted into living spaces, for those long nights on the job. Each door had a small sign with the handwritten name of each member of the team on it.

The southern wall was mostly bare, with a few small windows at the top edge that could see out into the concrete lot in front of the building. As usual, it was raining hard and the windows were now partially submerged, obscuring your view of the front.

The western wall had several bulletin boards on it, each mostly covered in photographs, printouts, and clippings related to previous attempts at trying to find the treasure. The rest of it was mostly plain, except for a few holes in the drywall, put there over time by smaller conflicts, fits of rage, or the occasional explosion. There wasn't a lot of excitement here most of the time, but when there was, it usually got very interesting.

The eastern wall had two sets of doors, one heavy wooden door that led to the stairwell, and another pair of thick metal doors that were supposed to be for the elevator. The elevator winch had been rusted and scrapped years ago, however, so now it was mainly there for aesthetic purposes. There was also a table dedicated to food and drink, and sitting on it were several unopened bottles of water, a coffee machine, and an open box of donuts Maria had brought down earlier that morning. Now that the afternoon had arrived most of them were gone, leaving only crumbs.

The entire room was in a state of organized chaos, built up after several months of trying to find that fabled treasure. Of course, none of it brought you any closer to the goal, except for that datachit.

It was sitting next to one of the old computers in the back. It was a small storage drive about the size of a wallet with a bright yellow plastic case. It had a retractable cord set in the side so it could be plugged into a device, and three small lights on the top of it. Two reds, and a green. Currently it sat inert, but someone could plug it into the computer and attempt to decode the data on it, or log into the Extranet and try and find some information on the coordinates.

Something happens.

The sound of a speeder's hover engines spinning down in the lot above is accompanied by a low rumble of thunder. The muffled sound of a door being thrown open comes from upstairs, followed by several demanding voices. Maria's voice replies, but the words are hard to make out. She sounded worried. The people didn't sound like any of the other Riggers in the building, and none of them owned a speeder. It wasn't uncommon for loan sharks to come looking for Riggers to pay off their debts, treasure hunting was an expensive hobby with few payouts, but Maria knew how to handle those types. This was different.

A few of you could go up and see what the commotion is all about, or stay unnoticed and listen to it play out.

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I'm just the narrator, your characters are free to do pretty much whatever they want in this world, so long as they get the right rolls. If you need something clarified, or want to know more about a certain thing, don't hesitate to ask in the OOC thread or send me a private message.

Hibou, what is a Twin Suns Supply?I'm glad you asked, reader! Twin Suns Supply is the OOC name for this sci-fi universe. In this alternate future, the human race never ended the space race. Men landed on the moon, and then Mars, and Earth's hunger for outer space still wasn't sated. The rivalry between the Soviet and American space programs drove them to start mining off world, bringing in copious amounts of rare metals from the asteroid belt, which in turn sparked a golden age on Earth.

For several decades, science and technology blossoms and humanity enters a sort of golden age. Research stations are launched into orbit, first by national space programs, and eventually contracted out to companies. Soon, most of space travel and technology is operated by corporations, the most infamous of them being Osman Inc. Shortly after their sixth station was launched into orbit, it was lost, supposedly due to mechanical error, in the atmosphere. Fragments landed in the ocean, and from these fragments grew a previously unknown algae that rapidly replicated and choked the oceans. Earth's already teetering ecosystem began to collapse, fisheries shut down worldwide as the algae mutated to poison the water, then the air itself. The human race had to relocate.

Blasting off into space with only rudimentary terraforming technology, those who managed to get into space before wars and famine destroyed what was left of civilization on Earth settled on Mars and set up camp. Over time, they managed to rebuild and form a livable world further from the sun, but they had learned that no world would house them all forever. So, shortly after the year 2110, armed with a new technology known as the quantum grappling engine, along with improved terraformers and scanners, they blasted off into the great void of space on the first ships in history that could travel faster than light. Of course, with all new technologies, it didn't work perfectly. Only half of the ships got where they were going, others ending up in entirely different places or simply being obliterated.

Fast forward another several decades to the present day, humanity has managed to spread over many hundreds of stars, and a new government has arisen to watch over this new empire known as the Interstellar Alliance of Nations.

You can't expect us to read all of that fluff! You didn't even mention TSS in that wall of text.I know, I know. I was getting to that. Keep your pants on.

Anyway, the important thing you gotta know is: The Interstellar Alliance of Nations is powerless and obscenely corrupt. They hold little actual political or military power in this future. This is the future, so the real heavy lifting gets done by these entities known as megacorporations. Like corporations back on Earth, they have a very strict bureaucracy, and do normal corporation things like bribe politicians and run exorbitant advertising campaigns, but their influence here is tenfold. They run trade routes, gather resources, produce ships, weapons, and laws, which they enforce using their own high-tech paramilitary forces.

Of these megacorporations, there is our good friend Twin Suns Supply. They rose up during the beginning of the great expansion, based in the binary star system Alpha Centauri. They earned their name by flying colony building supplies between worlds, but eventually expanded into colony building, then research, weapons, ships, and now are in the business of pretty much everything.

So these megacorporations run pretty much everything, and life varied greatly depending on what work you did, who you did it for, and where it got done. The Milky Way is split up into three tenatitive and constantly moving zones, called The Core, The Middle Worlds, and The Rim.

The Core is the small and heavily populated cluster of worlds near the Sol system, where medicine and technology are at their peak. Gleaming glass towers and shining skies are common sights here, and so long as you've got the cash, people here don't have to worry about sickness or unhappiness. This, by no coincidence, happens to also be where the majority of megacorp headquarters are located, as well as the capitol of the IAN.

The Middle Worlds is significantly larger than The Core, and here infrastructure is alright, but not exactly ivory-tower tier. People living here live shorter lives where they work hard, living middle class lives on these middle class planets. This happens to the the place where people live the most quiet of lives, free from the dangers of The Rim and the high-class politics of The Core.

The Rim is the largest and least populated sector of the galaxy, where life is hard and short. Many people living out here are either living off the land as miners or terraformers, but a smaller demographic walk a much more exiting path. Out here, some try to strike it rich finding the next gemworld where, by some fluke of nature, the planet is teeming with rare metals and minerals worth trillions of credits. They're highly sought after by megacorps, and as a result, those who find them are rewarded handsomely if they can stake their claim (and keep it). If word gets out that there could be one out here, mercenaries, megacorp operators, and prospectors alike will flock to it, and there will always be blood.

Hey, that section was longer than the first one! And your color coding is starting to get on my nerves. What do I HAVE to know about this setting?Sor-ry. I worked hard on that color coding.

Well, what you have to know is that this is the future. 2231, to be exact. Humanity is now spread across a ton of stars, and lives under the watchful eyes of megacorporations like Twin Suns Supply. There's cool stuff like laser weapons, cold fusion, FTL travel, and fringe science.

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Here's another installment of Hibou's Weird Background InformationThese will pop up occasionally whenever I drop some information that probably warrants explanation. They'll also make their way onto the OOC thread for easier access, if you're into that kind of thing.

In the 23rd century, language has changed a lot. Borders have become less defined, culture is more diffused, and trade is booming. So, the formation of trade languages is common among interstellar merchants. Some trade languages are used in such a large context that they become official languages of some factions. Sino is an example of that kind of circumstance. It is an amalgam of separate langauges that originated from the eastern Asian continent and Indian subcontinent, featuring heavy influences from the Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, and Tibetan languages. At the present day, it's one of the most widely used languages today, and many people speak it alongside their own native language. As a result, bilingualism isn't just common, it's the norm.

Other languages that grew up like Sino include Balto (A wide reaching mix of languages originating from eastern Europe), Indo (Incorporates the linguistic traditions of the Middle East, North Africa, and the Indian subcontinent), Nilo (Primarily Creole with some other influences, like Afrikaans, Swahili, and even some Arabic), and Roma (The closest thing you'll get to English, it also incorporates Spanish, French, German, and other romance languages.)

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According to all known laws of physics, nothing can travel faster than light. Mathematically speaking, it would cause time dilation to such a degree that a person could theoretically travel back in time, stretch infinitely across the universe, and also have infinite mass. These things are, of course, literally impossible, making FTL travel the ultimate impossibility. In TSS, this still holds true. Particles of matter cannot travel faster than light, but ships can still travel faster than light using a method called "folding".

The fabric of space can be bent, this is already seen through things like light refracting through strong gravity fields like around stars or black holes. What would normally travel in a straight line now is curved because of the curvature of space around strong gravitational fields. Space can be bent at a larger degree and in a smaller area using ship-based machines called "quantum grapplers" that use miniaturized particle accelerators to bend, torque, and fold the fabric of space around them. With enough power, these quantum grapplers or "QG"s can fold space underneath the ship its mounted on, effectively shortening the distance between point A and B by allowing the ship to travel over the fold much like an ant crawling across folds on a tablecloth.

This method of transportation is effectively cheating the laws of physics, but it is the most effective way so far discovered to travel faster than light. This method does not come without its drawbacks, however. Once ships "enter the fold", they must maintain the grappling field through flight. If the field were to collapse, the particles that make up the ship would be torn apart. The level of destruction varies with the speed at which the ship was travelling. A ship travelling at just over the speed of light might be able to reinstate itself with only minor damages, but a ship travelling several times the speed of light (simply referred to as 'c', used in the same way mach is relative to sound) would receive catastrophic damages, sometimes even being destroyed on the atomic and subatomic level. As such, entering and exiting the fold near populated areas is generally frowned upon.

Welcome to the jungle.Allow me to introduce you to the planet Murray. Originally, this frontier planet was an ice ball floating near the outer edge of its star's habitable zone. That is, until terraforming pioneers settled here and started pumping gases into the atmosphere to warm the place up. This did achieve the goal of melting the ice, but the process released more gases from underneath the sheets, causing a runaway reaction that turned this place from a sunny ocean getaway into a dark, dangerous planet constantly battered by a worldwide maelstrom.

Humans, as stubborn as they are, remained here for some time, unchecked by galactic governments. Drilling and fishing settlements came and went on its surface, and rumors circulated of more mysterious things happening beneath the waves. Nobody was quite sure what was going on, but more stories kept popping up about how one fisherman saw lights deep in the water, or a weather satellite picking up strange energy waves from the middle of the sea. People speculated, myths propagated, people claimed they found record proving it was a sunken space ship, or a vault full of gold, or the answer to life itself. Nothing concrete, of course, but it was enough to inspire people to go searching for these unclaimed treasures.

Riggers.

People looking for those treasures were called Riggers, because the unforgiving sea required special equipment to explore, and their impatient hands jerry rigged submersibles to descend into the waves. Very few came back, and none with treasure. Only more stories. That's how it was. Riggers had big dreams and empty hands, that is until you and your team of Riggers somehow came across a mysterious datachit during one of your outings. It was just lying there in an old box you found in a rusty shed out by the coast. It didn't seem very promising at first, but upon plugging it into your own console, you found that it carried a ton of encrypted data and a set of coordinates leading to some spot in the middle of the ocean. You're not sure what it could mean, but you've spent enough time on this planet to know people would kill for this kind of opportunity.

It looks like you guys had your first clue.

But before we all go off gallivanting into adventure, I've got a few questions for you. Just a formality, I promise.

What's your name?What do you look like, exactly?If you came across a difficult situation, would your first instinct be to try and TAKE IT HEAD ON or THINK YOUR WAY AROUND IT?

If you choose TAKE IT HEAD ON, answer the next couple questions. If you didn't, skip on ahead.

What kind of high-caliber ass-kicking machinery do you have on you?What would you say are the two things you're the best at? And don't say kicking ass again.

You chose THINK YOUR WAY AROUND IT? Alright then,

What kind of civilian grade self-defense items do you have right now?What would you say are the four skills you're the most proficient with?

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For the sake of simplicity, characters will be divided up into two main categories: FIGHTERS and SPECIALISTS. Fighters have proficiency with weapons, as well as two extra skills. Specialists have forgone the proficiency in weapons and instead have twice as many skills, giving them more versatility outside of combat situations.FIGHTERS will generally be people with lots of combat experience, like mercenaries, combat medics, and PMC soldiers. They make things more deader, and they're pretty good at it.SPECIALISTS cover a more broad range of people, ones who trained in other things, like mechanics, doctors, and pencil pushers. They're here to solve problems you can't shoot your way through, and fix stuff up in case things go pear shaped.

I plan to have an equal balance of both violence-based and everything else based challenges for you guys to encounter in this adventure, and having the right skills will be crucial to getting past both of them. Encounters are resolved using a d10, with numbers added or subtracted depending on the current situation and your skills. (A mechanic can fix an engine pretty easily, but if he's covered in grease and suffering alcohol withdrawal, he'll have a harder time than normal.)

As a side note: Rolling a 10 is a critical success, and will guarantee not only success but also some other boon that will be decided on a case to case basis. On the other hand, rolling a 1 is an immediate, absolute, critical failure. No matter how small or insignificant the task, it will have failed, with spectacular consequences. Someone's-gonna-lose-an-eye spectacular.

The rest of it is pretty straightforward, you've gotta roll higher than a certain threshold to succeed on your challenge. Successes/failures are relative, however, and rolling closer to the threshold will result in more grey victories, so try your best to get those high numbers.

What other stuff do you have on you?Any other special traits or quirks I should be worried about?

Well, that's all of them I've got written down, but there's one more thing I gotta know-

Who were you before you became a Rigger?And how did you meet the rest of your team, anyway?

Huh. Not exactly what I expected, but an answer's an answer.

Post your character's answers here in this thread and once we've got enough people, we'll get this thing underway!

Welcome to Livma-6, a beautiful island planet harboring a number of archipelagos that nearly two billion humans and a host of unique plants and animals called home. But, two years ago, a mysterious virus appeared on the planet that turned any manner of life into bloodthirsty mutants. Within a few days, the entire planet was reporting heavy losses and military forces were being ordered to pull out. A planet wide quarantine was put into effect. Two weeks later, the last known survivors stopped reporting.

In the present day, July 12th, 2215, a TSS passenger ship carrying a number of company executives was ripped violently out of warp near the planet, and at the last known position it was crash landing near Ward Cove. A rescue team has been dispatched, and twelve hours after the crash, it's arrived at Livma-6.

Their mission is simple: Land on the planet, locate the crash site, retrieve any survivors, and get out. However, there are some complications. The crash site is crawling with malfunctioning robots, angry wildlife, and the ever-not-friendly mutants. To make matters more interesting worse, there are survivors on the planet that the rescue team isn't aware of. (As far as they know, everyone's dead.) The rescue team can't allow any contaminated substances, or organisms, onto their evacuation vehicle, but let's face it, if you lived on a post-apocalyptic planet covered in mutants, you'd want to leave too, and the evac ship is their only ticket off planet.

Let the fun begin.

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The Megacity - They call it Ward City. The downtown is filled with 200-story buildings that stretch beyond the clouds and deep underground. The city's eastern side is covered with places like surf shops, ice cream parlors, and other island life venues. On the side bordering the industrial district, more shady places pop up like abandoned warehouses and night clubs. On the residential border there are, mom-and-pop diners, home improvement stores, bowling alleys, and other monuments to suburbia.

Residential District - Housing nearly a half a billion people, the residential district is a winding maze of apartment buildings, mansions, and concrete housing projects. The quality of life is a gradient, with the nicest parts of town at the edge of the north side, and the most run down huts are placed at the edge of the industrial district.

Industrial District - The real commercial meat of the island. Here, they produce everything good, bad, and ugly. Smokestacks and solar farms dot the roofs of the plants while the sound of machinery used to drone on and on through the night. Now, everything lay dormant as the worker bots that used to run the plants have been shut down. Or have they?

Spaceport and Defense - The island's one and only spaceport, placed strategically next to the island's defense system. "Why does an island have a defense system?" You may ask. Well, humanity has been expanding very quickly, and there has yet to be a formalized space armada to police the increasingly large number of civilized planets. As such, planets are given the daunting task of protecting themselves from space pirates, crime syndicates, and angry megacorporations. The island is surrounded with electric fences, and a series of continental shield arrays are kept at it's center. Military bases can be found, each has a hangar of defense drones, missile silos, and even more electric fences. At it's center is the spaceport and hangars, once filled with ships of every kind, now lay destroyed after the planet's defense system had to be turned on itself to prevent people from escaping the quarantined planet. It is the last known point of contact with the planet's government before it all went black.

Tropical Resort - I'll be honest, I'm not sure why I put this there, story wise. It just seemed right with an island planet and all. Along the island's edge are various bungalows, condos, and other tourist storage facilities. Move inland and shops with trinkets, exotic seafood, and those ridiculous looking floral shirts border the streets. Dotted among them are various entertainment venues, like amphitheaters and normal theaters and even holo-movie theaters. People sure like to watch stuff.

Mechanics: The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at mathMainly I'll just be rolling monsters'/players' evasion stats against the attacker's accuracy stats. Accuracy will differ between weapons, and they all have effective ranges. That means that hitting someone 500 feet away is easy with a rifle and hard with an SMG, but at 5 feet the SMG is superior. With a rifle, you'd have an easier time just whacking them.Speaking of whacking: Damage! Armor helps a lot with reducing damage on cutting/piercing attacks like metal swords or bullets, but there's a lot of different types of damage to worry about. Armor might protect against bullets and lasers, but there's not much you can do against being electrocuted or hit by a supersonic cinderblock. Be prepared to take some and give some.

All stats are going to be measured in "relative" terms. A gun won't have +4 accuracy, it'll have "Very accurate" accuracy. Weapons won't deal 12 damage, they'll have "Very likely to blow someone's arm off." damage. This system is in place because numbers are for nerds, I like writing silly phrases, and in real life damage isn't measured in numbers, it's measured in shrapnel.

For skill checks, if you're good at it you won't fail. If you're not good at it, you'll have a hard time. If you're bad at something, don't try it. Whatever you're working on will blow up in your face. Yes, even if you say you're bad at first-aid. That is the one and only outcome. Wear goggles.

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You don't have to say you're good at sniping or you're good at hitting things with a pipe. I'm just going to assume you've all got weapon training with all kinds of weapons. Unless you're a VIP. Then you gotta fill a skill slot with "Weapon Training". Survivors/Rescue Team Members can specify a weapon if you really really want to be the rootiest, tootiest, point and shootiest at sniping or shotgunning or whatever.

Monsters: Aah!By request, there will be mutants. They're more interesting than zombies and that means that new, innovative combat techniques are going to be employed. Fighting a flesh ooze is different than fighting a corpse, and mutant teeth tend to be sharper than the rotting human variety.But mutants aren't all! The future might have really nice beaches, but that doesn't mean you're safe from sand worms. Robots, pissed wildlife, and even talking plants will all be there trying to kill you. Why? Because variety is the spice of life, my friend. Also it's because different weapons do different amounts of damage depending on it's target, and you guys should get a chance to capitalize on that. I won't say exactly what weapons damage what, just use your noggin to figure it out, or be very surprised when that plant mutant is reduced to green, grassy mist by your new pistol.

Perks: It sounds like a personal problemYou're all humans, but each group comes from a different background and the gameplay will reflect that. Rescue team members are highly trained mercenaries. They shoot better, run harder, and jump higher than anyone under normal circumstances. They also start with very high grade equipment and body armor, courtesy of the multi-trillion credit corporation that is funding the operation.Survivors might have been normal citizens two years ago, but to make it this far you've got to be of a different breed. They'll have higher resistance to pain, and take more hits before going down. They also are more quiet when moving around and are harder to sneak up on, a skill gained through years of avoiding dangerous mutants. They'll start with lower grade equipment and armor, because they've had to scavenge what they've got.VIPs don't really have much going for them, aside from their time as a TSS executive. They work really well under pressure, and when a stressful situation presents itself, like being ambushed by ten foot tall mutant seagulls, they will run and react quicker than most others in the same situation. As an extra, things that recognize people, like robots or fingerprint scanners, are much more obedient towards a high ranking corporation member than to some guy off the street or a hired gun.

Infection: Incredibly deadly diseases and youSurvivors are the only people that are immune to the virus because of the natural genetic immunity they were born with out of sheer luck. There has been no vaccine created as far as anyone knows, and the signs of active infection are obvious throughout the city. Lucky for those un-immune, the disease only completely turns dead people. Probably. However, if someone is bitten or infected fluids enter their bloodstream through some other way, they will become sick.Being sick slows a person down, makes them sneeze and cough, and occasionally causes hemorrhaging in the eyes and lungs. As the sickness advances, people may start to experience mutations. For the most part, it would be things like weird bumps and change in skin color, but other times you might end up with an extra eye or long tail. How is this decided? Well, every time you post while being sick, I roll a die. If you get unlucky, or maybe lucky, you mutate. Don't worry, the chance is small. There is no known cure, but with some know-how and a lot of luck, you could make one.

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If you want your survivor to have some kind of mutation, I'm not going to stop you. The immunity isn't a 100% always-works kind of immunity, and if a survivor is exposed to enough of the virus, it can have some effect. That said, no catgirls. If you want a third eye, or a pair of weak arms on your stomach, then go ahead. Mutations are going to be weird, and they do turn people into screaming, gruesome creatures.

Okay, I'm ditching the class system in favor of even more flexible characters, and so I don't have to worry about giving appropriate loot. Weapons are not included in the sheet; you'll get them in the intro.

Character Sheet: The only thing that everyone's guaranteed to read

Name: (Usually it's two words, maybe a third word in between the two. Usually.)Age: (A number, usually between 0 and 100)Appearance: (Face, hair, scars, that kind of thing. Survivors, if you have any mutations, put them here. Nothing too crazy.)Faction: (Be it Survivors, Rescue Team, or VIPs. Other positions include Ship AI, and dog.)Skills: (Pick three pretty broad things. VIPs, stick "Weapons Training" here if you want it. Everyone else is good with all weapons, but can have a specialization if you so desire.)Armor: (Futuristic stuff for the rescuers ((hardsuits n' stuff. full helmets are welcome and recommended)), cool apocalypse gear for survivors. road sign breastplates and stuff.)Backstory: (Optional, but it'd be nice.)Other: (Anything else remarkable about your character, or just stuff you wanted to add. Fears, ticks, and personalities can go here.)

ITT: Post forum-wide records for various arbitrary acts here. A thread for some of the most awe-inspiring acts that you've seen on the forums, or just something ridiculous that happened and you want to carve it into stone. Try to give some info and numerical values when puttin' up them records so they can at least be ranked.

Record for the Fastest Locked Thread goes to Perigin and his thread "if you were to kill someone". Total thread time: 6 minutes, 21 seconds. RIP.

In a future where humanity has finally found extraterrestrial life, but it has gone horribly wrong, you are the sole person who can find out why. Welcome aboard the RSS Adreptius, Inspector.

This is...Incubation PeriodYou are a freelance investigator hired by the Society for Extraterrestrial Life Research and Study to board the RSS Adreptius and figure out why they haven't sent any research reports back in nearly a month. The last transmission they received said that they had finally found what they had come for, a living specimen of C74, named C74-B6.

This RP is a suggestion RP where you guys control an investigator as they travel through the claustrophobic and dark hallways of the Adreptius. There will be combat elements as well as crime solving, talking with people, and breaking your way into critical areas. All the while you're having to deal with whatever managed to take out a hundred man crew.

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It's the future, the year 2401. Humanity has spread out from earth and has colonized the stars in stations and colonies, spanning nearly a quarter of the Milky Way galaxy. So far it's been rather quiet, aside from various factions of humans fighting against one another no extraterrestrial beings have been discovered to wreak havoc upon the human race. That is, until now. A long distance research drone was deployed near the star Lues to deploy smaller bots designed to gather samples of the various planets and planetoids for any sign of life. They found it on Lues-3, a small planetoid no larger than Earth's moon. Underneath it's rocky exterior lay a high pressure lake of methane. In that lake was a small microbe living off of hydrocarbons in the fluid, named C34.

The Research:The RSS Adreptius had been assembled and stationed in a solar orbit around the star Lues in response of the discovery. The Adreptius was a standard biological research vessel designed to hold a closed system capable of recycling it's food and oxygen sufficiently enough to support a crew of nearly a hundred. It had been in operation for nearly four months with no luck of retrieving a single living speciemen of C74. C74-B6 was their first. The final transmission by Dr. Dean Kabzinsky said that they had been cultivating colonies of the microbe, and lab trials could begin soon. His exact words were that he had "Great hopes for this little thing. It was going to change humanity forever."

Well, let us begin.

You wake up in your pilot's chair with a start, having just had a bad dream you can't seem to recall. You let out a sigh, it sounds rather...

So, starting this new naval RP I've been working on for a couple days. The premise is that it's about twenty years in the future, and a new miracle metal has been found. It's been named "viridium" and deposits rich in the stuff have been found along the eastern coast of Africa. Mining operations have been founded all along the area, and ships laden with the material are sent off to Europe and America for experimentation and application.

However, some of these ships have been lost to pirates, and with them billions of dollars worth of viridium. As a result, a task force has been created to man a fleet of ships to guard these transports with the reasoning that they'll pay for themselves in a minimal amount of time and rid the area of piracy. At the same time, these modern pirates have been selling the metal on the black market and have been getting more dangerous with each day.SO! Here is where you come in. Right now you've all been called into a conference with Admiral Johnson of the United States Navy. He's here to help you men decide what kind of ship you want built to most effectively guard the shipments of viridium. I'll put up some individual character sheets later but for now you can discuss what kinds of equipment you want.

Johnson waits until you're all settled, and then starts up a projector bringing up a PowerPoint presentation with the title slide "PROJECT GUARDIAN" Written in big, American looking text.

"Well, this is your ship. Or what will be your ship, it's in the design phase right now. We want something that'll keep our supplies safe, and you men are the best we've got. So, take your pick."

I LIKE 'EM WITH A LITTLE MEAT - 700 ft long, with some girth. Can hold most guns and moves at a fair clip. Good all-around. Can hold a weight up to 30. Natural resistance of 10 hits. Can hold 4 weapons.

BRING ON THE POWER - 900 ft long, real wide. Holds any type of gun you can think of, but also moves real slow. Effectively a floating fortress. Can hold a weight up to 40. Natural resistance of 20 hits. Can hold 5 weapons.

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THIN - Simple six-inch steel plating along the outside. Can take about ten solid hits before getting breached. Weight value of 2.

BG-M5 CANNON "Posiden's Trident" - It's a three-barreled 60mm cannons firing normal shells. Great for hammering away at large ships. Comes with a guiding system that can be upgraded to increase it's effective range. Named what it is because it made the ships that carried it the gods of the sea back in the day. Weight value of 4.

HMG-X4 MACHINEGUN "Natasha" - I don't even know what possessed our RD department to make something like this. It's an unusually large minigun with 43 individual barrels that all fire at once. Shoots .50 BMG rounds at God knows how many rounds per minute. Take the highest number you can count to and multiply it by 20, and you'd get nowhere close. Definitely the weapon of choice for taking apart small ships. Has a small effective range, but this thing will turn a boat into floating tissue paper in under three seconds. I'm not exagerating, we've done it. Weight value of 3.

LHT-B4 LIGHTNING GUN "Tesla's Dream" - This one is a real fine piece of work. Doesn't even need to be aimed at metal craft, just don't use it near friendly ships. This thing can arc. It's an enormous Tesla coil that has been reimagined to actually be aimable through the use of an electromagnetic cone wrapped around the tower. Takes a bit of charging and doesn't actually damage the boat, but will fry everyone on board. Doesn't work on wooden or rubber craft. Weight value of 7.

DM-G8 LAUNCHER "The Hammer" - It's what it sounds like, fires bombs instead of bullets. Uses a special combination of EM propulsion and simple gunpowder to get these things at a reasonable speed. Pretty hard to aim when you're firing at moving targets, but does devestating damage to the stuff that that it hits. Weight value of 3.

LS-R LASER CANNON "Ultraviolent" - Using a special mirror array and the largest goddamn capacitor this side of the Atlantic, the LS-R turns focused electrical energy into a powerful beam capable of penetrating most light armor on the first shot. Pretty accuracte so long as you keep the computer's tracking and mirror-adjustment programs running. Takes a while to recharge. Weight value of 5.

S.A.M. MOBILE MISSLE ARRAY "Sammy" - Comes literally in boxes, don't ask me how they're shipped. I haven't asked. Anyway, they're laser guided fire-and-forget missiles usually from earth to air. Pretty handy for taking down aeiral targets and small boats, things that can't take that much of a beating. It's effective range is on the far side, and is actually kinda iffy when you're hitting targets that are really close. Weight value of 3.

H-S.A.M. MOBILE MISSILE ARRAY "Samuel" - It is, in essence, a bigger and badder version of the normal SAM rockets. The only difference is that these are designed for bigger ships, and have a shorter range. They're likely overkill on smaller civillian craft, but knowing you guys you probably don't care. Weight value of 4.

AS-TP V5 TORPEDO "The Kraken" - We can install some torpedo tubes into the hull of your ship, handy if you're fighing real big fuckin' ships or submarines. They aren't very manuverable, have to be guided by video, and don't go too far. But, they fight things underwater and are pretty handy as a result. Weight value of 4.

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[Gotta get there somehow.]AQUATIC NUCLEAR GENERATOR MK I - Pretty standard nowadays, pretty much the benchmark for all engine powers. Weight of 4. Speed factor of 5. Stability of 0.

GENERAL MOTORS DIESEL ENGINE - Now here's a beaut. Runs on twelve cylinders each the size of a grown man. Been engineered to use seawater as a coolant. Also runs the risk of getting water into to actual engine, so keep an eye out for that. Fast as hell, but the fuel isn't very efficent weight wise for something of this size. Weight of 6. Speed factor of 10. Stability of -1.

PLUTONIUM ENGINE MK V - One of the earlier models that's been redesigned to work on a vessel this large. Thanks to its widespread use beforehand, the engine has some neat safety features that make it a sight more stable should it be damaged. Plutonium compresses pretty well, actually, so it makes the engine fairly light. However, it's also not very good as a fuel for moving something that weighs as much as a small country. Weight of 3. Speed factor of 3. Stability of 2.

VIRIDIUM ENGINE PROTOTYPE MK II - Something the RD boys cooked up, uses our precious viridium as a fuel source. Turns out, it's great! It's fast, it's efficient, and it doesn't weigh much. The only issue is that this thing isn't very stable. It's still experimental and has a small chance to... Catastrophically fail. Weight of 4. Speed of 10. Stability of -3.

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[For that personal touch. You can take two, just make 'em count.]MULTI-COMPARTMENTAL FUSELAGE - It'll cost a bit, but in exchange we can add some extra walls to hold back seawater. It actually comes standard on all ships, but they come with about ten. With the upgrade, we'll double that. Water weight taken on by direct breaches will be halved and you're less likely to sink.

CREW TELEPORTER - Man, the RD boys really outdid themselves this time. This thing can teleport you across the water to the ship you're fighting. There, you can take on their crew by suprise. Maybe you wanna put a bomb on the platform and hope it doesn't explode as it's teleported. Or maybe to bail water/yourselves as your ship sinks. Hopefully, it won't come to that.

VIRIDIUM-TITANIUM ALLOY ARMOR PLATING - So, your ships come with the standard steel armor plating. With this upgrade, we can keep the weight of your armor the same, but increase it's effectiveness by a factor of 200%! It also will cost us a fuck ton of money, so don't screw up.

ENHANCED SENSOR ARRAY - So, your projectile weapons have a certain effective range. From that, the computers can't calculate where they should aim the guns to hit your enemies. With the new sensor array, the effective range of your guns is tripled. Have fun sniping with that 60mm cannon, you crazy sonofabitch.

HIGH EXPLOSIVE ROUNDS - Effectively double the damage your cannons, launchers, and guns do. Please don't point the upgraded guns at any of your crewmates, the results don't leave any bodies to bury. This upgrade doesn't affect things that don't fire shells.

UPGRADED ELECRICAL GENERATORS - Doubles the damage of any energy based weapons, including railguns by replacing the circuitry running through the ship from copper to a more efficient alloy of silver. Please keep your crew from stealing the wiring, as it ain't cheap to replace.

OPTIMIZED ENGINE ARMOR - Wrap some extra steel plating around the vital parts of your engine and increase it's stability factor by two. Now it's more likely to keep sputtering on in case you take a shell to the engine room.

HUGE FLAG - This actually doesn't do anyhting, but you can make your own flag and fly it as high as you want. Take it if you're confident enough you won't need a special. May or may not be incredibly flammable, just FYI.

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Weight - How much something weighs. Your ship can only hold so much before it's too far under water for it to be safe to sail. When you're hit, your weight will increase over time as water fills your inner hull compartments.

Speed - How fast that engine will propel you. Weight does not affect this, as the rating is true up to the acceptable maximum weight of the craft.

Stability - How likely the engine is to catastrophically fail. The nature of the failure depends on the type of engine and how malevolent I'm feeling the attack that damaged it.

"Alright, I'll let you gentlemen discuss what kind of things you want on your ship while I prepare your mission briefs. Don't go overboard." You can hear the Admiral chuckling on his way out of the door, and you are left alone with your future crew mates.

The lights flash and adrenaline pumps through your veins as the tires screech and you fly around another corner. The buildings are blurring together and you've lost track of how long you've spent in this chase. Seconds, minutes, hours, it's all the same. All that matters now is bringing it to an end.

Welcome to...THE CHASE

PICK A SIDE.PICK A CLASS.PICK A WEAPON.PICK A CAR.JOIN THE CHASE.

SIDES - THIS AIN'T NO TETRAHEDRONPOLICE or CRIMINAL

CLASSES - STAYING AHEAD IN MORE WAYS THAN ONEDRIVER - Bonus to driving, comes with a GLOCK 9mm or a .357 MAGNUM and two clips.GUNSLINGER - Bonus to pistols. Comes with two GLOCK 9mm or two .45 pistols and six clips.SHARPSHOOTER - Bonus to rifles. Comes with an M40 or an AK-47 sniper variant and four clips.THE POWER PLAYER - Bonus to shotguns. Comes with a Remmington 900 and or a two sawn offs, you crazy bastard. Both start with 32 extra shells.

EACH SIDE STARTS OFF WITH TWO CARS FULLY LOADED.CHASE CONTINUES, MORE CARS JOIN, HEAT GOES UP.AS HEAT INCREASES, THINGS GET CRAZIER.

GET KILLED.TAKE OVER AN NPC.GO AGAIN.END THE CHASE.

Character SheetName:Side:Class:Weapon:Car (Starting cars are the ones that are unmarked):

There is no escape. There is no end to the City. One of the two sides must be eliminated. Let THE CHASE begin.

((This is the first one of my One and Done series, hope you like it. Also the first one I'm aware of that has a respawn system so loose as this. If all four slots are taken, you will be added to the RP. Just wait until something explodes. Heat increase has a curve to it, so you'll get the first few levels pretty quickly. Don't ask where the criminal cars keep coming from. They just do.))

You finally manage to lever the door open to this old, abandoned place. The old, cracked frame nearly gives way as you push it aside and the tarnished bell rattles above you. A torrent of dust and crumbling ceiling pours onto your shoulders as you cross the threshold into this forgotten place. The sign outside said it was some kind of shop or museum, but now as you look around, the only things left in this place are some tables strewn at odd angles and an ancient counter in the back. It was only a shell of its former self. Dust-laden shelves line the left wall. On the right, light rectangles mark where pictures once hung, contrasting with the dirty walls. Rusty bent nails stuck out of the plaster like tiny tombstones. Only one faded photograph remains in the entire shop.

It doesn't give any more insight than the rest of this place as to what it was once for. The man's jovial expression holds as many answers as does the gentle breeze wafting into the shop from the open door. Dust motes dance in the slowly setting sunlight. You sneeze. The force of your lungs rocks the already crumbling shop as something clatters to the ground noisily behind you. Startled, you whip around to see what had fallen, only to find another piece of the ceiling had fallen down. However, something else catches your eye. Further back, behind the counter, there is a doorway. It looks just as ancient as the rest of the shop, but when you get closer you find there are footprints in the dust leading through. By now the sun has nearly fallen behind the horizon, and you can barely make out a few figures in the back room.

A small worktable rests against the wall on your left, a cabinet looms in the dark on the far wall, and another picture hangs on the right. This one is of a pine forest. There's no sign of whoever made those footprints, and everything in here looks just as old as the rest of the shop. Perhaps they were just your imagination.

The sun has set, and the moonless night now hangs overhead. You decide to leave the strange emporium. Making your way through the shop in the dark, your elbow hits something. No- someone. You jump back frantically, bumping a table that squeaks in protest, but find that nobody is there. The shop is just as empty as it ever was. You hurry to the exit, and slip out the door you came in. Pulling it shut, air rushes out through the crack, pushing dust and debris against the aging wood. The door shuts with a muffled click, and the old brass bell jingles again.

A thousand stars twinkle overhead. You decide to go home.

CURRENT RPsThe tables are bare, the shelves empty. Only dust lives here now.

It is the year 2122. This takes place in a universe where the space race never ended and humanity has spread throughout the galaxy.

You are a member of a team hired by the company Twin Star Supply to land on the planet VCL-47. It is known to the inhabitants as Juno. Local topographic and subterranean scans indicate a large supply of precious metals beneath its surface, and terraforming of the atmosphere has proven successful. Mining teams have touched down a few months ago and are beginning to dig down into its surface. Supply drops are currently the only substantial source of food and water, as the soil is incapable of growing any known crop. (Small hydroponics labs are around, but they are moreso research than food oriented.) The reason you are being sent down is that your employer's main competition, Matterhorn Industries, has also spied the planet and set down mining operations at the same time. You are to disrupt and remove these posts with any means necessary. Out here, there are no laws, so don't let them stop you.

So to recap: You work for Twin Star Supply and have to free a planetary gold mine from their rival company by any means necessary.

Now for character introduction.

The shuttle shudders and jerks through your flight as the air conditioner above your heads sputters to keep the interior from becoming an oven.

The interior is not lit and you are having trouble seeing the other occupants in what little ambient light there is. The seats you've been sitting on are rather hard and the harnesses cut into your shoulders with each bump.

You are sitting in two rows facing one another in the tubular fuselage of the craft, to the back is a hatch that opens and doubles as a loading ramp. To the front is an airlock that leads to the cockpit. One of the seats on the left side is missing and is replaced by a shallow stairwell leading to another exit door in the side of the shuttle. You haven't had much to do except twiddle your thumbs for what must've been hours now.

You think about your destination. The riches that await and the dangers that guard them, all kept awfully vague by the company. They could be hiding something dangerous, or perhaps they just want to dump you on this backwater planet because you've done something wrong. In either case, you're about to land...

So, in pre-Cataclysm New England, there was a need for moving goods around. The main grunt of the work may have been taken by trailer-less semi trucks, but there's got to at least be a few trains around there somewhere. Or at least train tracks, with above ground train stations full of zombified commuters and vending machines. The trains themselves could have various cars, some for shipping vehicles, or military supplies, or a few metric tons of wood. Others filled with cabins much filled with similar loot to lab dorm rooms. Even more with dining cars, or the all important engine with accompanying engineer zombies and various tools as well as the possibility of restoring these trains to their former unstoppable glory.

The main issue I see is that the trains would have to be exactly on top of the tracks, and should they be capable of restoration and operation, they would only be able to move along said tracks.

Wanted to make a proper thread for this, and also rewrite a few things.

Wall of text past spoiler, but this explains most of the stuff the people onboard would know.

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This universe is currently 150 years or so after the canon apocalypse. The difference is, the bombs never hit. The portals were closed before they got too far out of hand. The public took notice, it was protested, apologized, and "shut down". The government had let these labs shut down, but the megacorporations of the world kept them running in secret. Fast forward a few years, they've perfected quite a few technologies that they had worked on in the past. Samples were taken from the sub-planes without incident, portals understood, and shutdowns perfected. Go forward about a century. The United States and the rest of the world have been slowly dominated by General Supply, a company that had began a short while after the initial inicdents, and had started as a research company that offered to turn these cutting edge technologies into cheap and simple consumer products. Their success in the R&D fields left them with a surplus that they used to take over a number of other companies. At this point they've got their fingers in almost every pie imaginable.

So, enter the space colonies. The space race has been taken over by private companies for quite some time, as have many other industries. Mail, roadwork, water supply, even the military have been privatized. They've been racing eachother to every milestone, and as a result the last century has been a golden age of invention and innovation. Robots have become androids, capable of fine manipulation, and some of certain levels of sentience, and these androids have become commonplace in the workspace. Even ones that are self-conscious, ones that are capable of what scientists can only call "emotion", are reality. These androids are one of a kind and usually kept inside of a stationary computer rather than a body, but even that barrier has been passed by certain research firms. Your average military weapon is a laser rifle, but some firearms are still kept as antiques or for jobs that lasers simply aren't big enough for, such as 40mm cannons, or rocket launchers. Space age technology has become more prominent, the sky now filled not with stars but with low-orbit satellites. Self-sufficient space colonies exist, but are rather small and usually only are in operation for more than a few months. General Supply has aimed to change that with the Sigil series. They've (officially) built seven craft, each more advanced than the prior, but all kept up and running as long as possible. They are there as a sort combination ark and research center, each one designed for a certain purpose, but all with profit in mind. Now, very few people outside of the higher-ups of General Supply know anything of substance about their first station, Sigil Alpha. It was the first station to employ artificially generated gravity by way of quantum-alteration of subatomic particles. Advances in the field of quantum mechanics have allowed scientists to manipulate individual atoms to be more gravitationally attractive than they would normally be. This generates a field of both gravity and immense radiation, both of which have been harnessed. Gravity was there to keep your feet on the ground and radiation to fill collectors, of which is used to power the station, alongside the solar panels (which did most of the heavy lifting for such a small pod). Sigil Alpha technically never existed. Its generator got out of hand and caused multiple radiation leaks onboard, forcing the astronauts to evacuate and later de-orbit the irradiated craft. Sigil 1 was the first true Sigil station, this one held a crew of 12 who farmed various plants in space to see how long they could keep a closed system going with this experimental technology. They went four months until this, too, was put out of orbit thanks to orbital calculations that were sub-par.

About 6 years later the stations Sigil 2 and 3 were put up. Since the capacity of the stations were so large, parts of the hull were sent up to be put together in space. The rest of the interior was sent up in shipments and applied to the inside. The entire process took nearly a year. Sigil 2 and 3 were built as sister stations. They had a tubular design, with the gravity generators running down the center. Aside from the power generated by the radiation, the stations are powered by auxiliary solar panel, but most of the heavy lifting is done by a nuclear generator onboard. The stations were stocked with enough fuel rods to last them until they were supposed to be decommissioned. Engineering was kept towards the back, reserarch center, and crew quarters and life support kept at the front. The rest was filled with offices, labs, human resources, etc. They had two “spines” running the length of the ship, which were the main hallways. There were many “ribs” that sort of split the station into a more square based design. The shuttle dock was at a separate module attached to the exterior of the station at the intersection of the port spine and the midship rib. There, the supply shuttles could dock and deliver supplies from the ground, and the trans-station shuttle could dock to transport samples (mainly) from 3 and 2. They were built for crews of about three hundred. Sigil 2 was mostly research while Sigil 3 was mostly hydroponics. 3 sent data and samples to 2 where they were processed and sent back to ground control. The crews of both stations were capable of maintaining their closed systems for nearly two years before requiring replacement radiation shielding for their gravity generators. Otherwise, they were designed to keep running until their atmospherics systems begin to fail about a decade after being put up.

Sigil 4 was the first station to employ planar gravity generators rather than a tubular design. On the third day of operation the station snapped in half and folded itself along the length of the ship. Because the particles managed to retain their supergravitational qualities, the station was crushed into a rough ball of metal and corpses, leaving little to no shrapnel in the orbit. The particles lost most of their charges, and the station was reported to have been taken out of orbit manually. However, there have been rumors of a strange sphere in space with bodies dancing around it, as if tugged by invisible strings.

Sigil 5 was a debugged version of 4, this one with a more curved bottom and better control over the gravity field, it could comfortably hold nearly 1500 researchers and farmers aloft for a decade. With the radiation being reflected off the bottom of the ship and into deep space, the shielding didn't need to be replaced until well after the functional life of the station had been reached, so it was the first truly self-sustained Sigil station produced by General Supply. Next was Sigil 6 which was a symbol of General Supply's movement towards space tourism rather than research. This was a similar size to 5, but with the larger accommodations held only 450, a quarter of which were service staff running the behind-the-scenes food production and atmospheric monitoring. The station had larger rooms, recreational areas such as a pool and tennis court, artificial sunlight from artificial suns, and an enormous viewing deck at the front of the ship. Sigil 7 was the latest and greatest ship, this one a space casino. Its surface was nearly entirely windows facing the earth with all the rooms put at the outer edge and the casinos and restaurants put at the top of the center, the food production and engineering stuffed at the bottom of the ship. General Supply has stated that they will not be producing any more Sigil craft for some time, but there are still rumors of the floating utopia, Sigil 8. Service crews of robots, farms that tend themselves, and air as pure as the void of space were hidden within it. It was said that this station could hold all of New York (6 million strong) and still keep them all happy and healthy without a single working human, and it could keep doing this for hundreds of years. Of course, these are just rumors, and someone was bound to find a ship the size of the City of Lights out there sooner or later, right?

Now comes the Cataclysm. It's now the year 2193. General Supply, in a race to overtake the country of China, fumbled for the first time in a century. The portal of one of the secret laboratories became unstable beyond repair, tearing a hole in the fabric of reality. This spread to numerous others around the world, and before you knew it all communications with the ground were cut off and the world looked dark at night. Sigil 2 and 3 used to work in tandem, until Sigil 2 had a similar communications blackout a few days before the Cataclysm. It is now five days after the cutoff from the ground, and you are on Sigil 3 with nearly 350 other people. It's cramped, humid, noisy, and confusing. The next time you come into contact range of another station is in a week, and it is with Sigil 5. You’ll catch up with 6 two days after that, and then 7 another week after that. And then you are alone for nearly two months while you wait for your orbits to catch up with one another again.

For those who didn’t read all of that, here’s a shorter version.

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It's the year 2193. A company named General Supply gets really big and powerful after the cataclysm, builds a bunch of spaceships after about 150 years. The first one went wrong, but was covered up. The second one was also taken down. Sigil 2 and 3 are stations that accompany eachother, 2 being research oriented and 3 being life-support oriented. 4 was destroyed. 5 is a bigger research vessel. 6 and 7 are tourist ships. There are rumors of an 8th which is supposed to be a floating utopia. You are on Sigil 3. Communication with Sigil 2 was lost a few days ago. After 7 was put up, the cataclysm hits properly this time, wiping out communications with the ground. It is now 5 days after you have lost communication with the ground. You will come into comms range of 5 in a week, 6 and 7 are coming soon after that.

Gonna try for that "in space nobody can hear you get mauled by zombears scream" sort of atmosphere. I wanted to leave a few options for players, they could either find out what's happened on Sigil 2 and perhaps try to re-activate its comms array, or wait until 5 stops by and find out what we can from them about the other stations and what they might know about the ground. Or, they could remain on station and try to keep it in shape now that the supply shuttles aren't coming for a while.

So, lemme know what you think (and help me put together the actual game mechanics. Lore is sooo much fun to write.) and if you'd be interested in playing in such a universe.

The actual universe is 150 years or so after the canon apocalypse. The difference is, the bombs never hit. The portals were closed before they got too far out of hand. The public took notice, it was protested, apologized, and "shut down". The government had let these labs shut down, but the megacorporations of the world kept them running in secret. Fast forward a few years, they've perfected quite a few technologies that they had worked on in the past. Samples were taken from the sub-planes without incident, portals mastered, and shutdowns perfected. Go forward about a century. The United States and the rest of the world have been slowly dominated by General Supply, a company that had began a short while after the initial incidents, and began research. Their success in the R&D fields left them with a surplus that they used to take over a number of other companies. At this point they've got their fingers in almost every pie imaginable. Enter the space colonies. The space race has been taken over by private companies for quite some time, as have many other industries. Mail, roadwork, water supply, even the military have been taken by corporations. They've been racing eachother to every milestone, and as a result the last century has been a golden age of invention. Robots have become androids, capable of fine manipulation, and some of certain levels of sentience, and these androids have become commonplace in the workspace. Even ones that are self-conscious, ones that are capable of what scientists can only call "emotion", are reality. These androids are one of a kind and usually kept inside of a stationary computer rather than a body, but even that barrier has been passed by certain research firms. Your average military weapon is a laser rifle, but some firearms are still kept as antiques or for jobs that lasers simply aren't big enough for, such as 40mm cannons, or rocket launchers. Space age technology has become more prominent, the sky now filled not with stars but with low-orbit satellites. Self-sufficient space colonies exist, but are rather small and usually only are in operation for more than a few months. General Supply has aimed to change that with the Sigil series of station. They've (officially) built seven craft, each more advanced than the prior, but all kept up and running as long as possible. They are there as a sort combination Ark and research center, each one designed for a certain purpose, all designed with profit in mind. Sigil Alpha was the first station to employ artifically generated gravity by way of quantum-alteration of subatomic particles. Advances in the field of quantum mechanics have allowed scientists to manipulate individual atoms to be more gravitationally attractive than they would normally be. This generates a field of both gravity and immense radiation, both of which have been harnessed. Gravity to keep your feet on the ground, radiation to fill collectors, of which power most of the station. Sigil Alpha technically never existed. It's generator got out of hand and caused multiple explosions onboard, forcing the astronauts to de-orbit the station or risk triggering Kessler Syndrome. Sigil 1 was the first true Sigil station, this one held a crew of 12 who farmed various plants in space to see how long they could keep a closed system going with this experimental technology. They went four months until this, too, was put out of orbit thanks to orbital insertion calculations that were sub-par. Sigil 2 and 3 were sister stations. They had a tubular design, with the gravity generators running down the center. Engineering was kept towards the back, reserarch center, and crew quarters and life support kept at the front. They were built for crews of about three hundred. Sigil 2 was mostly research while Sigil 3 was mostly hydroponics. 3 sent data and samples to 2 where they were processed and sent back to ground control. The crews of both stations were capable of maintaining their closed systems for nearly two years before requiring replacement radiation shielding for their gravity generators. Otherwise, they were designed to keep running for a decade before being put out of commission in [insert year here]. Sigil 4 was the first station to employ planar gravity generators rather than a tubular design. On the third day of operation the station snapped in half and folded itself along the length of the ship. Because the particles managed to retain their suprgravitational qualities, the station was crushed into a rough ball of metal and corpses, leaving little to no shrapnel in the orbit. The particles eventually lost their charges and the station was reported to have been taken out of orbit manually, but there have been rumors of a strange sphere in space with bodies dancing around it, as if tugged by invisible strings. Sigil 5 was a debugged version of 4, this one with a more curved bottom and better control over the gravity field, it could comfortably hold nearly 1500 researchers and farmers aloft for a decade. With the radiation being reflected off the bottom of the ship and into deep space, the shielding didn't need to be replaced until well after the functional life of the station had been reached, so it was the first truly self-sustained Sigil station produced by General Supply. Next was Sigil 6 which was a symbol of General Supply's movement towards space tourism rather than research. This was a similar size to 5, but with the larger accomodations held only 450, a quarter of which were service staff running the behind-the-scenes food production and atmospheric monitoring. The station had larger rooms, recreational areas such as a pool and tennis court, artifical sunlight from artifical suns, and an enormous viewing deck at the front of the ship. Sigil 7 was the latest and greatest ship, this one a space casino. It's surface was nearly entirely windows with all the rooms put at the outer edge and the casinos and resturaunts put at the top of the center, the food producion and engineering stuffed at the bottom of the ship. General Supply has stated that they will not be producing any more Sigil craft for some time, but there are still rumors of the floating utopia, Sigil 8. A service crew of robots, farms that tend themselves, and air as pure as the void of space. It was said that this station could hold all of New York (6 million strong) and still keep them all happy and healthy without a single working human, and it could keep doing this for hundreds of years. Of course, these are just rumors, and someone was bound to find a ship the size of the City of Lights out there sooner or later, right? Well this was all the ships in working order. Now comes the Cataclysm. General Supply, in a race to overtake the country of China, fumbled for the first time in a century. The portal of one of the secret labratories became unstable beyond repair, tearing a hole in the fabric of reality. This spread to numberous others around the world, and before you knew it all communications with the ground were cut off and the world looked dark at night. Sigil 2 and 3 used to work in tandem, until Sigil 2 had a similar communcations blackout a few days before the Cataclysm. It is now five days after the cutoff from the ground, and you are on Sigil 3 with nearly 350 other people. It's cramped, humid, noisy, and confusing. The next time you come into contact range of another station is in a week, and it is with Sigil 5. Then 6. Then 7. And then you are alone for nearly two months while you wait for your orbits to cross one another again.

(I jumped around a lot in that, didn't I?)

tl;dr version: You're on a spaceship built by a megacorporation 150 years after present day, and it's beginning to show wear while you're getting communications blackouts from every other source of information you can muster. Lotsa mystery and lotsa secrets to make up on the spot discover on your possibly permanent stay onboard the Sigil Research Station III.

Feel free to tell me your thoughts. Criticism is wanted and encouraged, as this is my first time doing something like this.